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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was kyoto.

Last in Parliament September 2008, as Conservative MP for Red Deer (Alberta)

Won his last election, in 2006, with 76% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Immigration Act October 24th, 1994

You are not.

Terrorism October 19th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Reform Party I offer my deepest condolences to the victims and their families of today's tragic bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel. While no words can do justice to the suffering of the families, we must speak out.

Terrorists who seek to destroy peace must not be allowed to win. Those who target innocent people to generate fear and hatred must be fought with every ounce of our energy and condemned by all civilized societies. In the end it is the voices of those who have struggled long and hard for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East who must triumph. Their victory will honour the lives of the victims and send a message to the world that violence need not be an endless cycle.

We are sickened by this criminal act and will not forget the victims of terrorism. I hope members of this House will pledge to fight on for their memory and the memory of those who have gone before them. The world community must never surrender to terrorists and we must never abandon our quest for peace.

Department Of Natural Resources Act October 17th, 1994

Madam Speaker, I used to sound like the hon. member through the seventies and early eighties when I believed the lies we had at that time about consumption and about available resources.

I come from a place where we have world scale petrochemical programs that we were told would only last another five years. We have now extended them for twenty years and there is no foreseeable end to our ability to produce.

The member referred to China. What about the alternate energy that will in fact come about such as coal gasification? China has huge resources of coal. What about some of the alternate energy forms that are there just waiting to be taken over? What about all those?

Trade September 29th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, the jobs created by our export promotion missions are for Canadians, including Quebecers. Therefore any disruptions by the PQ will be costing the people of Quebec jobs. That is the point we have to make.

Is it not time for the Prime Minister to proceed and involve the Quebec business community in the trade mission and ignore the disruptive politicians if they continue?

Trade September 29th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, one of the Prime Minister's most important foreign affairs jobs is promoting Canadian exports outside of this country. This is what will provide jobs, jobs, jobs. We support this role and the Team Canada approach in China.

However I must ask: How is the Prime Minister going to handle the threat posed by Mr. Parizeau and Mr. Landry to sabotage the upcoming Canadian trade missions by using them as a forum to spread their separatist agenda?

International Conference On Population September 29th, 1994

Madam Speaker, I also want to commend the public servants who worked on this program. I know a number of people in foreign affairs put in a lot of time on this.

Without really reviewing the conference and what happened, I would like to highlight a few facts where I think there would be agreement among all of us. Certainly over population is a threat and the world's sustainability is certainly dependent on us bringing this problem under control.

However, demographers and researchers have done an awful lot of work on this. It is a topic for study in universities. I am not sure that a conference of this magnitude would be necessary to discuss the fact that there is a problem.

Second, the empowerment of women, giving them greater control over their lives through increased access to education, health care, and increasing their economic contribution in developing countries should be strongly supported and would have our utmost support.

Uncontrolled migration is another major problem. We have seen what has happened in Rwanda and it is something that we must deal with. Making things better at home is one way to help uncontrolled migration.

It is rather a motherhood issue to say we would support the essentials of life, such as water, food and shelter. Certainly the preservation of basic human needs is vital and we are all concerned about that.

The spread of disease is another major issue that we must look at when we talk about populations. We have seen the spread of AIDS, how it started in Africa and what has happened since. We now have the plague in India and we see how quickly it has become a global problem.

We would like to emphasize the importance of the NGOs. They are on the spot, and in many cases understand the issues much better than governments do. Therefore, the promotion of the NGO community, helping with their funding as opposed to government to government grants is certainly commendable.

If we agree on all of these things then what do we find is the problem with the Cairo conference? What kinds of questions do we have to ask? Most obviously Canadians want to know if this was the best way to achieve the goals desirable in this world. One has to wonder just how much further we have come as a result of this conference and what will come out of it. What new and innovative matters were learned at this conference that we did not know before? Was a timetable established? Will that timetable be kept? Will there be action instead of just words?

Reference was made to the fact that a large part of the conference was the discussion of abortion. Both sides struggled to try to gain control of the conference. From a Reform Party standpoint we believe that abortion is up to the individual and not up to international bureaucrats.

Everyone agrees that increased wealth in countries leads to smaller families. Talks aimed at promoting open markets and economic diversification were really not discussed at this conference. While certain aspects of the economy were mentioned that did not seem to be leading to any concrete action.

We have to ask, was this a good expenditure of our funds? Canada sent a huge 28 person delegation to Cairo, including nine MPs. I was in Cairo last June. The tourism was great but we have to ask, did those 28 people have to go and what did they accomplish?

The estimated cost that we could find at this point was approximately $235,000 paid for by foreign affairs. In addition in preparatory arrangements about $2 million was spent on this conference. Canadians are asking questions about the cost. Why did we send that many people? Could this money have been spent more wisely in other ways? Was this conference simply a recipe for big government? The suggestion that more agencies should tell people what to do is the traditional western approach to global problems.

The Government of Canada should not be exporting politically correct agendas. The best way to help developing countries would be to promote open markets, economic diversification and development, and even more important, help improve educational opportunities for everyone around the world.

Immigration September 28th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, I am here today simply because so many Canadians are asking the same question and are demanding an answer, not an answer that we can come up with in the months to come, but an answer that we need right now because the decisions are being made right now.

For Canada to think that we have the resources or the ability to be the 911 emergency for the world, we are far beyond that.

The minister would agree that there are many hot spots in this world, that there are many that can explode tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, and we have to establish some criteria that we are going to follow when we make foreign affairs decisions, particularly in the area of peacekeeping.

We need to look at things like the economic implications, the humanitarian reasons. They are good reasons but then every single place would have these same reasons. We have to come up with a set of fixed criteria. We have to look at the geographical relationship. The people who are closest should be the ones who can help the best.

We have the OAS which should definitely have been more involved in the Haiti situation. The African states should have been more involved in Rwanda. We have to look at the effect on international stability. We have to look at the media relationships-should we always be driven by CNN and Newsworld? We have to ask those questions.

Canadian people want to know what it is going to cost. How much is this going to cost? How much money are we going to budget to handle all of these emergencies? Again, that all comes into criteria.

We have to look at the resources that we have and of course we have to ask ourselves what our commitments are. We look at the whole military situation and see an awful lot of generals but we are certainly running out of front line troops. We are expecting our men and women in the forces to do so many things and they are not able to be stretched any further.

We hear talk about the equipment not being adequate. We get letters from parents who have lost a loved one because they felt our ability to deliver was inadequate.

We have to ask, what are these resources? How far will they go? We have to have a plan. We cannot just trust politicians that say: "We will send them and we will let you know what we hope to accomplish after". We must know, we must ask questions. If my son or daughter was going I would want to know why they were going, what they are going to accomplish and how it is going to help Canada. For how long are they going?

The closest thing I have seen on how long we are going to be Haiti was when RCMP Chief Superintendent Pouliot said yesterday on "Canada AM" that we are going to be there for seven to ten years to train the police forces.

We need to know the criteria, the costs, the resources that will be expended and of course the plan and how long we are going to be there.

Haiti September 28th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, there is not enough maple syrup in Canada to cover the waffling of this government.

Since we cannot get an answer on any kind of a plan for Canadians, we do not know what it is going to cost and we do not know how long they are going to be there, could we at least find out the commitments, who they have been made to, what we have committed and why those commitments cannot be explained to the Canadian people?

Haiti September 28th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, last week the Prime Minister's government committed to send troops and RCMP to Haiti. Yesterday RCMP chief superintendent Mr. Pouliot stated that retraining the Haitian police force would take from seven to ten years.

Since the Prime Minister is asking Canadian soldiers and police to risk their lives in the chaos of Haiti and Canadian taxpayers to finance it, will he at least tell us his plan, the costs and how long we can expect to have Canadians in Haiti?

Peacekeeping September 21st, 1994

Madam Speaker, I guess what I am concerned about is that there are so many areas that are going to erupt and I do not see us developing any criteria as to what our guidelines are going to be in the future.

We are getting more and more letters telling us about the quality of our equipment. More and more letters are coming back home saying our equipment is not adequate. Could the hon. minister respond to that, please?